...Thursday's Rainbows and Interesting Clouds...

A thin line of showers and thunderstorms moved across south-central Indiana and central Kentucky Thursday evening, causing heavy rain, occassional lightning, and gusty winds up to 45 mph. Since it was a thin line, ample sunshine surrounding the showers and storms combined with the rainfall and caused an intense double rainbow all the way across the sky.

Courtesy of Brandon Terry of Crestwood.

Courtesy of Monty Webb of WHAS 11.

Other interesting cloud features resulted from these showers/thunderstorms, as well. A shelf cloud formed on the front side of the line of convection. This is a cloud that typically indicates strong, gusty winds are approaching. Warm air rising into the shower or storm rides up over the cooler air flowing down and out of the storm, resulting in this shelf cloud on the front side. Below is an example of one, also taking by Monty Webb of WHAS 11:

Lasty, another scary-looking cloud formation occurred Thursday evening, as well. Below are several pictures of mammatus clouds. Mammatus clouds look scary, but really only pose a turbulence threat to the aviation community. They form from the difference in density of the cloud and the air around it. The actual cloud is heavier, more dense, than the drier, environmental air below, so the clouds will sink into the surrounding air, causing the pouch-like formations. Here are a few examples: